HARD TARGET

HOLLOWPOINT

“Striking Sparks” — Page Five

Update!

Max-the-Artist has done a cool little video describing an adjustment to Marissa’s expression just before we posted. Check it out!

Happy Holidays!

So, I’m sure the very first things you noticed were those cool spark effects, hunh!? Yeah, down there, at the bottom of the… those are real, you know — no, I mean the sparks… oh never mind.

Coming up! We’ll be getting into the technobabble of lightsaber-ish construction theory, none of which would probably work in real life but I did at least try to give it some thought. That will be happening after the holidays, however. We’re also participating in the Collective of Heros “Secret Santa” Guest Art Exchange, so check the blog below for a fun piece of 3 Minute Max guest art done by one of the other Collective artists!

We — like most webcomics — will now be taking a short Holiday Break, since stats show that traffic dives into the floor during the holidays, starting with Christmas Week. (I think people mostly read webcomics when they are avoiding Real Work or school.) But this seemed like a nice shot to hold on for a while, and never fear, we’ll be returning on the 6th of January to pick up where we left off!

Oh, and if you haven’t seen them already, there’s some cool free “Strike Gate” wallpapers in the “Wallpaper” section of the top menu.

AAAAAND — Here’s the “Secret Santa” guest art! This was done by the talented Kenn Minter of Tales of the Emerald Yeti and we love it! Kind of like if 3 Minute Max was being done in a campy “Archer”-style.

Her crush on Max may well eventually put her in that category. Meanwhile.. compound green LASER with a discrete focus point where it reaches cutting torch intensity, also determining “blade” length. Maybe variable length? Not likely to be practical, but a neat interpretation of a light saber!

What, a working light saber? From when she used it against the lock or whatever it was, it could have been a simple laser – with a light saber handle…

I vaguely remember that the light saber technology was discussed in Martin Gardner’s column in Scientific american, decades ago. What I remember was something about a “standing wave” to limit the length of the blade. Which would not work without a means that reflects the wave…

There are devices that look very real when switched on but not when off, or vice versa. One major problem is the retractable blade that (seemingly) works without putting a physical mirror at the point where the blade should end… 😀 I hereby boldly say that such a thing will not be developed within the rest of my lifetime, which I hope will be more than 40 years.
Once you have a retractable blade working, variable lengths should be a snap.

The other problem would be to store enough energy within the limited space of a light saber handle. Cutting a steel lock requires some serious amount of enery. Such a light saber would last a few seconds.

How about using monofilament instead, anchored in the handle, as well as the cap. What you need then is a way to extend the string, and keep it straight (serious electromagnets at both ends?), and to get the light show, you just use a strong light source which you bounce off the cap end magnet which spools out from the handle. This should cut energy usage, and you can get the sound effects, etc., too, but unless the field strength is grotesque, I guess you get a bendy sword. Well, that fits better with the name “light sabre”, too. But what happens if two such swords “tangle”? Hmmmm …

That’s certainly how Larry Niven did it in the “Ringworld” books. (except he was able to use a stasis field to support the Sinclair monofilament.) As I recall, it ‘glowed’ because the filament was so thin it kept slicing through dust particles.